There was also a faction standardization that alpha, the excuse was to standardize the factions because (supposedly) then from equality we could have a better balance and from there begin to differentiate.
The problem is that it was not followed well or it was not continued well, Nescio, who was in charge of that, introduced several changes especially in October-December 2020, by the time I returned the game had changed a lot.
After 2020 we formed the balance and gameplay team.
The ideal would be to return to 23 from the current state, I mean to balance with ideas from A23, not with the stats, but with the concepts.
I didn't like the standardization of range units.
Before, slingers were better or different and archers could also do a powerful rush to enemy bases.
Both archer and slinger became skirmishers in practice.
My other suggestion is to make tiers for each faction, specializing the factions either with technologies or in their base units, some should have more differentiated units than others.
What was done in A24 is to equalize everything as if it were AoE where all units except the unique ones were equal.
All spearmen are equal except hoplites.
All skirmishers are the same.